


A Love Letter to the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration

by hops



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, IPRE Era, but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-10
Updated: 2017-08-10
Packaged: 2018-12-13 20:12:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11767482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hops/pseuds/hops
Summary: Lucretia writes a letter to the family who forgot her.





	A Love Letter to the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration

**Author's Note:**

> More prose-y self indulgence from yours truly.  
> I'm just sad about my mom Lucretia.

By the indigo light of Fisher's tank, Lucretia sits in the quiet hum of the ship. The days on Faerun are long and lonely, most of her time devoted to scouring towns for information or scouring Barry's maps and records for any sign of either her friends' astral forms or their forgotten relics. Her heart twists in her chest as she thinks of her family, cast apart and mutually unknown to each other, or just... gone. She touches the spines of the journals on her desk, the ones she'd received as gifts over the years from the six other members of the team, that she'd come to reserve for her more personal, or indulgent, writings. She pulls the latest, a deep maroon journal bound with rose gold trim (a gift from Lup), and thumbs the meeting of the pages.  

The journal falls open to the next blank page, drawing her deadened gaze for a moment. Gods, she misses them. There's so much in her heart. There's so much she wants to say that never made it past her goodbye.  

She takes a deep breath and pens in vivid blue:  

* * *

 

 _A love letter, to the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration_  

 _It's in our most silent moments that we must confront our troubled thoughts. I've been dwelling on the six of you for some time now, having taken the three that I could into your temporary lives. Your empty eyes cast judgement in my sleep, as if Fisher stole your memories but provided one new one in the form of the record of what I've done. I wish there was a way I could hide my shame from you once I bring you back into the fold, but I can't._  

 _I can't afford to get ahead of myself now. There's too much at stake. In the weeks after my trip to Raven's Roost, I spent my time scouring every surface of every glassing I could. I asked anyone who would listen for any signs of liches, but there was just nothing. I am desperate now. I am just desperate to know that you're okay. I've been reminding myself that this was my own doing, but it's killing me. I miss you all so much._  

 _Every perfect town-sized circle of obsidian is a reminder of why I had to do this. I wish you all could see them up close. More than anything, I wish I could have made you understand. How do you burden the burdened? How do you make sensitive what has been desensitized? How do you remind one of the feeling on that very first plane when we realized that every last flickering flame within every last soul would be extinguished if not for_ _the_ _reaching of our own hands?_  

 _When did we stop protecting the innocent? When did we forget who we are?_  

 _I understand now. I understand the selfish and terrible things that people_ _do_ _. I did what I did only because I love you. I love all of you. I wish there was a better way to show you than this._  

 _I long for the old days, more than any of us, I think. I miss your smiles, free and unburdened by the weight of a hundred dead worlds. I miss the call of your laughter in the distance under a billion different stars that changed with our flighty seasons. I miss the certainty of your next word, your next gesture, your next expression, that I'd come to know in each of you in our shared century. I feel as though I know you better than I know even myself. I have never been so moved by such a deep and unshaken love._  

 _There was a time I thought us invincible. I know better now. But still, alone, I dream of that feeling; o_ _f being young forever, of_   _defying the laws of the planar system itself. There's a piece of me that will always live in the nostalgia of flying from the storm. We grew into who we are at the intersection of wisdom and_   _mischief_ _. I learned the meaning of leadership. Of strength. Of family. Of joy. Of love._  

 _Oh, it's so hard to let you go._  

 _I love you so. I love you enough to cast you to the_ _Faerun_ _wind and fix what we've done myself. I come apart at the idea of being away from you, but it won't be long. The homecoming of each of the seven pieces of the Light will become our own, and on that_ _day_ _we'll be free from fear altogether. It is the day I l look forward to in these darkest moments. I hope that in the meantime you are free from your grief; that despite my transgressions, you might find something to make you smile as free as that first day we were all together. Our pristine red uniforms, shiny new brass buttons. White smiles. Smiling eyes. I miss you all so terribly, then and now._  

 _I'm so sorry for what I've done and_   _what I must do._  

 _I love you all, so very much._  

 _Lucy_  

* * *

 

With the wave of her hand she casts a drying spell over the ink and flips the journal closed. And, yes, there are the tears she'd been holding in for sake of not bleeding her ink. Silently, she covers her face and slumps on the desk, resting on her elbows.  

 _"_ Oh," she says softly as she cries, and it's all she can think to say. They'll never read the letter. They'll probably never forgive her, either.  

She hears shuffling outside the door, then the repetition of a name. Davenport. 

 _"_ Just a moment," she calls. The sound wavers sadly in the air.  

She sits silently in her grief for just a moment, then abruptly flips the journal back open. This wouldn't do.  _Nothing_ would do. No apology, no pleading cry, no love letter could fix the consequences of what she'd done. She feels lost. Hopelessly so.  

She tears the pages from the journal with purpose. She weeps as Fisher devours them with joy.  

She wipes the tears from her face, steadies herself, and returns to the deck with Davenport.  


End file.
